English Dub Review: Senran Kagura “DON’T STOP BELIEVING”

HOLD ON TO THAT FEELING.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

The Shinobi Masters tournament is over since Fubuki has unveiled her new weapon: a sentient, talking youma that is a threat to the entire ninja world. After making her dramatic speech, Fubuki leaves with the youma for reasons that elude me even now, and everyone retreats to lick their wounds. Gekkou and Senkou are left on their own, but decide to roll with Yumi and the others if only for their own safety.

Soon after, the teams regroup and discuss what they need to do to prepare for the new threat that Fubuki presents. Gekkou and Senkou, meanwhile, wander off, disheartened that their former master has betrayed them and the ideals they sought to preserve. However, Yumi makes friends with them and the two come into the fold.

Later in the evening, Asuka goes to meet Kagura at her temple to convince her to let Asuka handle the youma. Kagura reluctantly agrees, even though the technique Asuka uses to seal the youma is damaging to her body.

Our Take:

As I watch this show week after week, I find myself wondering just who this show was made for and why it keeps on persisting in its story. Being ecchi is one thing, goodness knows there’s been enough lewd anime throughout history to fill the Library of Congress several times over, but usually, there’s something that draws a viewer other than just the softcore porn. Characters, comedy, visuals, something that can pull you in and give you a reason to spend your precious time with the show at hand. But Senran Kagura doesn’t seem to have that. It’s auspiciously low-budget, its fights suck, and it insists on this ridiculous melodrama that makes “High School of the Dead” look like fine art. That’s this episode’s greatest sin, the shoving of this awful, stupid, mind-numbing story down our throats. It could be a show that’s fun, it could be a show that’s cute, but it decides instead to be boring. And boring is the worst thing an anime can be.

This episode focuses almost entirely on this world-ending threat that Fubuki has summoned to bring an end to all ninjas. But this threat falls completely on its ass. The transition from the ninja tournament to this newfound threat has been clumsy at best. Don’t bother trying to grasp Fubuki’s motivations here, because I doubt they make sense even to the showrunners, let alone to the poor souls watching this anime. There’s an attempt to make the story of Gekkou and Senkou compelling, but really, who cares about them at all. They’ve been nothing but cardboard cutouts since the show began, arrogant and smug, and should have been killed in the last episode so we don’t have to continue listening to them blather on about “true justice” or some such thing. I could not care less about their moral conundrum over what Kurokage wanted and am actively infuriated at the show’s attempt to make me tolerate them.

This show is a dumpster fire that just keeps on burning. It’s the kind of anime that makes you wonder why you ever enjoyed this medium in the first place. It inspires an existential terror of living in a world where this garbage is allowed to exist. This show is the sawdust of Funimation’s anime season: just filler, here for nothing else but to kill time and fill out a roster. Please, please do not watch this.